Digital Literacy

I. Socials PTI Presentations

My PowerPoint Presentation

The PTI Presentations are where the class is separated into groups of four. Each group is given a Socials topic to deliver a PowerPoint Presentation. My group was picked to research and speak about Residential Schools in Canada. We were given 10 minutes to present this to our class. The four of us got to work and began crafting the PowerPoint. We were all in charge of creating and presenting our individual slides within the group. On the day of the presentations, every group took turns giving their lecture to the class. After every presentation, we would discuss the topic that was just presented to us.

Communication and Collaboration

4. I constructively build upon or synthesize the ideas of my peers

After every presentation, we were allotted a time slot to mention what we took away from the group’s lecture as well as get into a bit of discussion about what some ideas meant. During the time we went back and forth between desk groups and we could debate or add information on to what was previously mentioned. This lead to us being able to attain a deeper understanding than just being talked at. Not only could we freely debate but we could also ask questions to the people that researched the topic. Everyone in the class that wanted to contribute to the conversation was allowed without judgement.

Research and Information Literacy

12. I look at controversial issues or topics from opposed perspectives to gain a more complete understanding

A big part of this assignment was being able to look at it from different perspectives. Everything we discussed were controversial topics but our teacher recognized that we as a class could handle it. Additionally, we made sure to address the issue in a way that wouldn’t offend anyone. When looking into residential schools some of the articles conflicted. My group had to dig to find the best sources and different perspectives. Some articles shared the stories of people that were hurt by these schools but some stories are just hating on people instead of helping to show their perspective.

Digital Citizenship

15. My work demonstrates a positive, productive, and empathetic worldview

Researching our topic led to us being able to sympathize with the victims of Residential Schools. From this understanding of their pain, we were able to pass on what we knew to help our peers learn this too. While we were focusing on the Residential Schools in Canada, that isn’t the only place with them. Our hopes by the end of our presentation was to get our classmates to understand what these victims went through and address what these problems on. Plus when we were leading the discussion afterward we were able to elaborate further for anyone that happened to be confused.

II. English Vignette

Vignette Script Document

Backdrop Slides

The Vignettes we did for our English class were based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We were split into groups of our choosing and assigned one scene from the book. My group got the final act, 5.1. We were allowed to change the setting and given a lot of creative freedom except the character’s personalities must remain the same and the plot of that particular scene needs to similar. The only other pieces of criteria were that it needed to be between 6 and 8 minutes and we needed 16 lines from the original book between all the members in the group. In my group, we decided to not change up the essence of the scene and work on the technicalities of our play. Due to us not changing much we were able to quickly get through the process of changing the lines from old to modern English. We included sound effects, backdrops, costumes, props, and had all of our lines memorized without forgetting during our performance. During the date we all presented, everyone went in order of their scenes to make them all blend.

Communication and Collaboration

2. I tailor my work to appeal to my intended audience, and use language and visual design elements appropriate for them

Knowing our classmates my group decided we needed to add some more humorous elements to it. We decided that when 2 of the characters put on the play for the King and Queen my character would act as dramatic as possible and Brianna’s character would put absolutely no emotion into the lines whatsoever. We needed to change the majority of our lines into more modern language because it was difficult to understand, especially for us. After all, we haven’t studied the way they talked in these plays much. Lastly we knew to make this play make more sense we had to have props and visuals. I proposed the idea of using the projector we were offered by the teacher and made a PowerPoint of different images that we needed as backdrops. We also had a stuffed lion, a sword, scrolls, hats, and of course costumes.

3. I respond to the work or ideas of my peers in a way that is compassionate and productive

To do this project we needed to change the original book’s lines so we all had to work together to make the parts flow. We all had the chance to pitch in ideas of what we could change, add, or remove and we made sure to try to include everyone’s ideas as best as we could. We also had no problem deciding who would play what characters and we all got along really well. Aside from the occasional times when we would be messing around and a bit off-task we were still not falling behind on work for this project. Additionally, when it came time to present everyone was very respectful of each other’s presentations.

III. English ZIP Inquiry Project

ZIP Artifacts

ZIP Annotated Bibliography

A big project we did in our English class is our ZIP Inquiry Project. I chose to do my inquiry on creating fictional characters. We had only 8 days to research and create our final projects. Half of the days I was working on this were spent doing research. Nearing the end of our researching period we were required to create an annotated bibliography to show our sources and how useful they were. After those four days, we got to create our learning artifacts. My learning artifacts were monologues from my character’s (the one I was creating) point of view.

Research and Information Literacy

9. I critically assess research sources for Currency, Reliability, Authority, and Purpose

As I mentioned half of our project time is spent researching so I needed to also be able to find sources that were good to use. I found that pretty much all of my sources tended to be a couple of years old but the elements of how to write a story don’t exactly change over time so that’s not all that important. I made sure to have tons of different articles and resources to make sure that they all supported what the other sources said and used the ones that did. I also made sure to have different sources to cover different aspects of what I was trying to learn.

Digital Citizenship

13. I attribute credit to ideas that are not my own by preparing a Bibliography/Works Cited and by using in-text citations

I created an annotated bibliography of sources I used during my researching phase. There are 10 sources that I put into a Works Cited document to provide credit to the original authors of the articles. From here I elaborated on 5 of these sources about why I found them useful. The process of creating this works cited document took a while because I needed to go quite deep into just how they helped me. I didn’t add in all of the resources I used because some of my sources were a lot lesser as I would just use them to confirm what other articles had already stated.

IV. Science Parts of a Cell Presentation

Script

One of the first projects we did for science is our Parts of a Cell Presentation. This project was a 56 slide PowerPoint that all of us added to. Everyone was allotted 2 slides. On top of that, we all were assigned a specific part of a cell, I got a centriole. The above images are my slides of the presentation. We were given few days to build our scripts and design our slides. When it came time to present we all went in order of the slides and delivered a few minute long lecture to the class. This was the way we learned about all the parts of a cell in a short amount of time.

Communication and Collaboration

1. I use digital spaces to plan and execute collaborative projects with my peers

My class all worked on building this one PowerPoint. More often than not there would several people working on the project at once. We made sure not to deliberately change other’s slide however there were some mishaps due to someone repeatedly changing the entire theme of the PowerPoint which messed up everyone’s slides. When the PowerPoint was just being formed a couple of us created the 56 slides and labelled them with our classmates’ names so no one would be confused and know what to do. This project having everyone’s work in the same document was also nice because we could get inspiration from other people’s slides for how we could format our slides.

Creativity, Innovation, Technology Operations and Concepts

5. I enhance the impact of my research or presentation through creative use of technology

This presentation had three parts to it. The slides, the verbal presentation, and the collaborative work with my classmates. This means I needed technology for over 1/3 of the project, the reason I say over 1/3 is that I also needed it to write up my project script. Because my PowerPoint slides were the entire visual aspect of this project I needed to spend time and make it look nice. I found images and after experimenting with different design aspects for the best theme for my presentation slides. For me, the way to make my slides the most impactful was to not add any words and just have a picture of each.

7. I design my work with consideration given to aesthetics and design, such as consistent colour schemes, symmetry or organization of visual elements, and overall layout

Considering we were making slides to show to the class we had to make them look good. I wanted to make my two slides resemble each other but not exact duplicates. I kept the theme of them the same but changed the colours to better match the images that were on them. I consistently needed to go on my slides to make sure no one messed with the overall presentation themes. I also made sure to use one image on each slide because the images matched what I was saying during my mini-lecture. Additionally, I positioned the titles on the center-left and the images on the center-right.

V. Leadership Hicks Lake

Leadership Presentation Script

There were a lot of components to our Hick Lake Retreat. We spent time planning and then went to the lake for a few days. Our retreat involved planning, lessons, games, cooking, and group bonding. At the start of the year, we worked on getting to know each other and plan out the details of our trip. When we neared the trip date we started to do things like put together meals and round up our equipment. On the trip itself we had leadership lessons, a hike around the lake, food, games, a solo spot, and just overall a ton of fun.

Creativity, Innovation, Technology Operations and Concepts

6. I determine and use the most effective medium to present my work

The Hick’s Lake Trip had presentation aspects on the trip itself. On certain days in groups, we took turns presenting leadership lessons. My group had to give a presentation on time management. We could pick anything to do for our project but it must be informative. Given our criteria, we decided that we would do a scavenger hunt. The point was that in the time frame they needed to prioritize the harder and easier tasks to get it all done. This was the most effective medium for us because we know our classmates and know they work better as a group when learning hands-on.

8. I challenge myself to increase my technological literacy by working with apps, software, or mediums that I have not used in the past

As we started this project almost right when school started in September I ended up using teams for the first time. My class ended up collaborating on many of the documents on teams and we used the chats there too. We used other mediums such as class presentations to each other but that isn’t the first time I’ve seen in-class presentations. It took a while to learn all the functions of teams but I learned to get the hang of it pretty quickly. I have already used a lot of other software and apps before so this was pretty much the only one new to me.